#PMaustausch – first online session for Project Leadership exchange attracted 55 within Siemens

My open invitation on SSN (Siemens Social Network) to exchange on project leadership by means of a monthly virtual session for 45 minutes has started successfully. All started with the idea to share my experience on Tools, habits and methods, that help me be purposeful in my daily business.

Inspired of the #Barcamp principle, I chose to invite openly to join an interactive session on the Siemens communication platform #Circuit.

Even my bare announcement of the idea for such session has drawn extraordinary attention within the Siemens Network. Besides many, who expressed their interest in participation, one has even offered to host one of the future sessions by presenting a new tool, that is helpful for him.

So I invited the first session with 3 workdays advance notice at an average morning time (where also part time jobbers can participate). Since the invitation on SSN contained a guest link for unregistered dialIn, I had no idea how many would come. And I am very satisfied with the number of 55 participants – as I have found afterwards in the logs of the session. The concept of exchange and interactive participation worked out – I would guess, some 10 people have contributed with comments and experience sharing throughout the session. Furtheron contributions and exchange keeps taking place on SSN even today, two weeks after the session.

As a topic I introduced the self-management methodology #GettingThingsDone (#GTD) of David Allen. To be precise the introduction including link to a relevant podcast was already contained in the invitation. So during the session, the introcuction was kept to a minimum, until I started sharing concrete personal measures, which I have found to increase my productivity in my everyday live. And it turned out, that many asked for more details, which were easily presented by simple screensharing and showing tools and tricks on my everyday working environment. Further on, other participants shared their experience and how they implement GTD successfully for themselves.

Concluding, I can say that

I am very happy to have found a way of learning and develpoment for myself, which apparently also attracts many like minded employees in my company.

Looking forward to the development of this series of sessions and of course to your feedback and contributions on this blog post.

Yours, Benedikt Pape

Further information:

• Why german name PMaustausch: I currently plan to host these sessions in german lenguage, since I believe exchange takes place best in native lenguage.
• Why limit to Germany, if Siemens acts internationally: My plan is not to offer sessions for all project managers of Siemens with one session. What I believe is, if this session proves to work well, further series of sessions will follow – hosted by other people, who will also contribute other methods, other approaches. This is how the diverse learning requirements of a diverse staff within Siemens can be covered.
• What is GettingThingsDone? Stay tuned to this blog – I promise to give some insigts in my experience with it soon. In the meantime consider listening to David Allens Podcasts
  http://gettingthingsdone.com/2017/05/episode-29-david-allen-gtd-keynote-in-milan-part-one/ and
  http://gettingthingsdone.com/2017/05/episode-30-david-allen-gtd-keynote-in-milan-part-two/